Alice Hendon

Artangleology

Watercolor Flowers – A Learning Process

Joanne Sharpe is teaching an online class now called 2019 Artfully Inspired Life. It is a year long class, with a specific set of lessons for each of the twelve months. You get the monthly lessons on the first and you have all month to complete the work. And you can jump in and start at any time – this is a never-goes-away kind of class. Just the kind of class I need. Because . . . time.

Last month we played with acrylics and I have to tell you it was not my favorite. No idea why my spellcheck insists that I must have meant ‘aorta’ instead of ‘favorite!’ But acrylics just did not resonate with me. I tried. To enjoy acrylics I need a big ol’ gelli plate and a brayer! This month we are working with watercolors. I love watercolors. I may even learn how to paint something other than backgrounds. Hahahaha! See, Sandra and Jennifer? There is hope for me yet.

Joanne teaches for a living, so I can’t give away all her secrets. You have to participate in the class to get those, but I can show you the first project for February. This is my set up when I work. iPad to play my CW shows or Netflix running old CW shows, my lovely paint water jar and my customized set of watercolors. If I am not using my Schminckes. These are a combination of mostly Daniel Smith, with a couple QoR and a few Winsor Newtons. Joanne provided some sample flowers that we practiced drawing in our practice sketchbook. I even used a fancy-dan Eco TWSBI fountain pen that I loaded with ink myself – without making a mess – and I love the pen! I am going to be needing another one or two of these and bottles of teal and pink inks.

And I started filling in bits of color here and there. I need to figure out a way to write. I used to have nice handwriting in the old days. I ruined it taking notes of police interviews – 27 years of writing as fast as a witness or a bad guy can talk takes a toll on nice handwriting. Don’t you love how entertaining and informative my posts are? Hahaha!

You can see all the little notes we made of things we should remember. This was super fun! I love Joanne’s teaching style.

The tangler in me kept wanting to make these perfect. The whole loose and free-flowing style was like a foreign language to me, but I have to admit I really like it a lot! Really freeing!

Joanne calls it whimsical. I call it a relief.

I took photos of this final stage 7 or 8 times. I scanned and did morning shots, afternoon shots, and evening shots. Crazy. I wish I had chosen better quality for my practice sketchbook. I didn’t realize we were actually going to want to keep the practice stuff. Next year, Joanne, you and me, lady, we gonna get a better practice book for sure!

And a second practice page. I may tear these out and glue them into a decent sketchbook. I should do that now before we get more vested into the year. Practice work is done now for this part of February. Tomorrow I’ll show you what I did for my first project of the month. So exciting! It isn’t too late to join our class. Check it out by clicking the link below. I promise it will be fun!

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14 thoughts on “Watercolor Flowers – A Learning Process”

I LOVE what you’ve done here, Alice! I, too, have such a strong urge to make things “perfect” … I’ve decided that urge is actually self-abuse. Really. And I have to remind myself of that every day. Drawing/sketching quickly, “scribbling” notes, then dabbing in some watercolors does sound like so much fun. I’ll try! (Really I will … 😉 )

Like spring arrived early looking at these! But then you’re gonna need all the colour you can get with all that snow!

Sometimes I tangle using a fountain pen and really like the loose liquid flow of it. A different form of tangling but really enjoyable. And exciting to be able to have colours that just aren’t available in fineliners! Also with water soluable ink I like to get a bit of bleeding going on with touches of water afterwards.

Beautiful, your watercolour flowers are free an flowing. The colours perfect for each flower an like the black designs, would make a wonderful page spread or lovely card as is. An finally the 7th finally stage one is my second loved choice. Your style represents you, looking forward to more enjoyable art. Have a terrific time taking the course an a fun week.

I can see you’re enjoying this enormously. Your blog posts are always so interesting for bits of life creep in here & there – & when you’ve worked with people in trouble, it’s a whole different ball game for day to day just isn’t!! – I digress…… Your description of whimsical as a foreign language is so apt & one I really identify with; my brain has enough trouble with the unpredictability of tangling.